how to relax

I’ve started making matcha at home every day. This is to curb an actual 4-5 cold brew a day habit. Reporting live that it is working. I like getting Ronnybrook milk at the market, and seeing/ tasting that layer of cream on top.

Last week, I watched the Royal Tenenbaums, then the next day, watched it again but this time with the director’s commentary. Besides just being comforted by an old favorite movie, I was so pleased to find this song, Lullabye, and then to listen to this Emitt Rhodes album for the first time.

I guess I’m really trying to figure out “how to relax” - like in an I just got in the sauna way, or an I just got an epidural way, but like .. more.. just every day .. without the intense heat or the drugs? I have been drinking chamomile tea with my daughter at night. Which is sweet, though sometimes messy, sometimes relaxing!

Something I started doing when I’m going to sleep is visualizing the cortisol (stress) hormones flowing through my blood and telling them to go back into storage in my adrenal glands. Like literally visualizing the little triangle-shaped adrenals sitting on my kidneys and directing the cortisol, in an orderly line, back in there, to go take it easy at home. I count them going back one by one, instead of counting sheep. Sometimes when it’s really windy outside, my daughter shouts GO AWAY, WIND! And it’s kind of like that, but I think it might be working.

I felt relaxed upon arriving to the market today and seeing all of the sunflowers.

I know it’s been a while with the newsletter - I tend to float around in my own head this time of year. Hope you’re drinking lots of iced tea (or at least water!) Thanks for being here <3

Also, I think this Curbed article - The Bookseller vs. the Frankenmansion on Perry Street is really funny. I think Left Bank Books is a great store.

“It’s not like I’m naïve,” said [bookshop owner] DuRon. “I depend on affluent people.” But something had changed. In his op-ed, he described the change on the block as a “hollowing out.” “We need access to good material. We need access to people with taste, but also money,” Kuronen said. “And I’m starting to worry that the taste and money are going separate ways.”